


Survivor

by Calypso_248



Series: The Life and Times of Sasha Smith [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Hope for the future, Humans need to take care of themselves, Lucy deserved alot more then three episodes, Pregnancy, She needs closure, The Master is a monster and not someone the fandom should admire, The Year That Never Was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:58:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calypso_248/pseuds/Calypso_248
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because let's face it, Lucy Saxon was more then a pretty red dress and a bruise on her face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survivor

**Author's Note:**

> I always felt that the character Lucy Saxon deserved more then what she was given. I hated that she was just tossed into prison without a thought for her circumstances and was merely an afterthought for the ever so compassionate Tenth Doctor. I tried to flesh her out a bit more, and tried to understand why she did what she did.

Lucy Saxon was never a victim, she was a survivor.

All everyone ever saw was the pretty, little aristocratic with blonde curls and a simpering voice, but she was so much more than that and deserves to have her story told.

She is born Lucy Cole, the youngest child of a Lord and grows up in a country home, filled with antiques and paintings that regale viewers with tales of long dead members of the Cole families. She wants for nothing and has everything a girl could dream of, a pony, netball lessons, dresses and a pink bedroom decorated with lace and frills.

Nearly every evening her father has meetings with fellow MPs, and her mother hosts countless dinner parties with beautiful, sparkling people in attendance. Sometimes Lucy would stay awake at night listening to the clinking of silver cutlery against porcelain plates, and the chatter of imperious voices, and think that is what it must be like to be special.

She decides that one day; everyone will know her name too.

And they do, but not in the way she would have wanted.

Lucy's childhood is a fairy-tale, unfortunately all fairy tales end.

When she is sixteen her older brother, Edward kills someone. It is an accident, he was fighting with his girlfriend and he pushed her, causing her to fall and hit her head. The media have a field day and Edward manages to hang himself in his cell before his trial can begin.

Her parents are devastated and her father has a stroke, crippling him at his prime. He can no longer be the MP for Tarminster and they have to sell the Cole family home and move into a bungalow. They have no friends, all those important people have abandoned them in their hour of need, and they are alone and impoverished, surviving on disability benefits and the remnants of the Cole family fortune.

When Lucy looked around that cold, dismal bungalow and thought of her mother's soirées, their family home and all the beautiful things they once owned, she burns with anger. She is furious that they have been tossed aside by their friends that they have been relegated to a life of poverty and despair because her brother was an idiot. 

Lucy is determined she will succeed and restore the Cole Family name. She will be the good child unlike her brother and save her family. 

Most of all, she will make all those petty people pay for forgetting about them, for treating them like dirt. She wants them to suffer like she has; it would only be fair after all.

Wouldn't it?

Lucy is not a gifted student but she works hard and scrapes a scholarship to St. Andrews University based on her prowess at netball. She studies languages and practices her Italian late into the night, much to the dismay of her roommate.

She knows she is not that intelligent, that she cannot succeed on her own. She needs a husband, a man with ambition and style who will rise to the top and pull her along with him.

Lucy is a pretty woman, not beautiful but attractive in a bland, non-threatening way that people can relate to. When she lands a job in publishing she takes extra care with her appearance, styling her hair into a flawless chignon, saves up to buy good quality clothes and applies makeup no matter her mood.

It takes hours of practice until she can apply it perfectly. She wields her lipstick like a weapon, painting her lips pink and layering her eyelashes with mascara so no one can see the cracks in her facade, the ambition and greed in her soul.

When she meets Harold Saxon she knows she's found her man. He is handsome, intelligent and more importantly she hears the whispers of 'future prime minister,' surrounding him. She edits his autobiography and carefully strokes his ego with her soft words and sweet smiles.

When he asks her out, Lucy sees a future of blue skies.

They get married on a Saturday. It rains heavily and Lucy is concerned about puddles that could ruin her ivory wedding dress. Years later, she childishly wonders if it was some celestial being crying for her.

She hopes so, after all no one seemed to care what happened to Lucy.

He whispers his true identity into her ear one night, delighting at her gasp and hungry questions. Harold Saxon may have been an attentive husband but the Master knows her deepest desires and promises her the world on a silver platter.

It is all Lucy has ever wanted, and she cannot refuse.

He takes her to Utopia and shows her the end of the universe and Lucy shrinks at his side, terrified by the darkness and bleakness of humanity's future. She is glad she will be long dead when it happens.

There is no point to anything, so why should it matter if Harry's plan comes to fruition?

She hates the Toclafane; their lilting voices send shivers down her spine. They sound like children but are the very antithesis of what children should be. Harry (no the Master) tells her everything will be all right, but Lucy doesn't feel in control anymore, like the ground has been ripped out from underneath her.

She has fought so hard to escape her helplessness and she is so close to power, she will not allow herself to falter now.

For the few minutes that Lucy knew Vivian Rook, she liked her. She was the sort of woman that Lucy had wanted to be, smart, independent, curious with a thirst for knowledge and a desire for truth and justice. When she had started poking holes in Harry's facade, Lucy was genuine in her plea for Vivian to run.

She couldn't run though, she made her choice. For better or for worse, she made her choice.

No one ever escaped Harry, and Lucy wanted to cry when he kept opening the door to hear the poor woman's screams. This wasn't the fairy-tale she had spent most of her life trying to rebuild. She had built her castle on pillars of sand and everything was falling apart, spinning out of control like a Catherine wheel.

Lucy knows she should tell someone, say no to Harry and back away. But she saw Vivian Rook die and she doesn't have the strength in her bones to fight back. She is too tired and afraid, she feels empty inside but she still wears her pretty suits and smiles like a princess.

Harry likes it when she smiles. And he's the only thing she has left.

So she watches the American President die, sees the Toclafane descend from a hole in the sky and slaughter 10% of the population, and the Doctor, the strange Time Lord that Harry is obsessed with, being aged into an old man.

She dances to the music Harry plays with a smile on her face and thinks that she should have been an actress. Certainly the performance she is putting on now should be Oscar worthy.

The kingdom that Harry promised her is not heaven, it is hell. He isn't even Harry anymore, he is the Master. He hurts her and others, especially the Captain who cannot die, and the family of Martha Jones.

When he forces her to watch Japan burn and she hears him laughing in her ear, she wants to strike the Master across the face. It's funny, because she loved Harry so much but she hates the Master, and she now cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. Everything she had loved about him is now cruel and twisted beyond recognition. 

The Jones family glare at her when she walks past them. She could have them punished, but she knows she deserves their hatred and accepts it as her penance.

Strangely, the flash of pity she sees in their eyes when she sports a cut lip or black eye hurts more.

Lucy talks to the Doctor one lonely evening when the Master is off terrorizing some poor, girl who was unfortunate enough to be attractive. 

"Couldn't you have stopped him?" She asks the Doctor, though she knows it is hypocritical of her since she helped.

"I promised him worlds beyond Earth," the Doctor says bleakly, cross-legged next to his tent. "He only wanted Earth."

Lucy is revolted, how could the Doctor allow the Master to inflict himself on other populations and worlds, especially since he has known the Master for so long, and is therefore aware of the madness that burns in his soul. 

She understands that the Doctor and Master are the last of their kind, but just because everyone else are not Time Lords, doesn't mean they deserve to suffer.

She hears the legends of Martha Jones, and she hopes that this girl who is so much braver then she ever could be will succeed. Earth needs a human saviour; their Time Lord defender is useless.

Her bruised face aches, and her thoughts centre around hurting the Master. He can read minds and he is too arrogant to think dear, sweet Lucy is a threat.

It's always the devil you know, rather than the one you don't.

Lucy remembered the dictators that Earth has endured. How they built monuments to themselves and mistreated their people. It makes Lucy smile to think of the Master being hung upside down like Mussolini.

She stops when she remembers Mussolini's mistress was strung up next to him.

When the Master's plan fails and Martha Jones wins, Lucy hides in the background, gleeful when the Joneses suggest execution.

Her joy drops like a stone into the pit of her stomach when the Doctor declares that he will care for the Master, like he is a bloody child. The Doctor says the Master is insane, and she hates that these two men, no gods, cower behind pathetic excuses such as madness. If they truly were the superior of humans they would own up to their mistakes. 

What is even crueller is that everyone on the Valiant will remember this fake year, the Year that Never Was. They will remember the horror, the pain and the never ending laugh of the Master. Lucy will never forget the way her parents screamed when the Master murdered them in front of her. She is sure the Captain won't forget the way the Torchwood team died either.

The Master may have owned Earth for a year, but he is Lucy's master no more.

She slips the gun out of the Captain's belt and shoots the Master in the abdomen. When he crumples to the ground and dies, Lucy feels strangely at peace. The noise in her head has quieted and the weight on her chest has been lifted away.

The Doctor cries over the body of his foe, and Lucy thinks he is pathetic. If he truly loved Earth, he would have empathized with the living rather than mourn over the dead.

The guards take her away and she is charged won't murder and treason. There is no Doctor to save her now. Lucy doesn't blame them for their mistrust; after all she is wearing a dress of revealing red silk as though she is a seductress. But if they wiped away her poorly applied concealer they would see she has suffered like them.

After all, when the culprit is beyond reach; his traumatized wife will do as a scapegoat.

Her parents don't come to visit her, and Lucy cries because all she wanted was to make them proud and now they pretend she is dead like Edward.

As she languishes in prison, all Lucy can feel is relief. She has endured so much but she has survived, when he didn't. Her bruises soon melt away, but Lucy is more concerned about another change her body is undergoing.

She is going to have a child.

Lucy is surprised the Doctor did not notice, but then again he is a selfish man and is blind to things that do not concern him. People might think that the Doctor and Master are opposite sides of the same coin, but Lucy sees more similarities than differences.

Her daughter is born in a dim, prison infirmary on a June afternoon. If her birth had occurred months earlier she would have been a princess of Earth, instead she is the child of a common murderess. Lucy had not thought of names, a nurse gives her a book of baby names and she flicks through it, looking for the perfect one.

Sasha. It means 'defender of mankind' and she hopes that her baby will be able to do what the Doctor couldn't. 

Lucy is only allowed an hour with the baby before a kindly nurse smuggles her away to Social Services. Lucy is smart enough to recognize a conspiracy when she sees one and she doesn't trust the Warden or her jailers, not when her baby is at stake.

She hopes her daughter is not like her, but is better and braver. That Sasha is more like Martha Jones or Vivian Rook then Lucy Saxon. Lucy prays that her daughter will be happy, that she will find people who love her and that she loves back. That she will feel no pain or sorrow, that she will have fun and enjoy life.

She knows her daughter will be remarkable, not because she is half Time Lord but because she is 100% unique, the best of both worlds.

The nurse promises that she will find Sasha a family that will cherish her. Lucy thinks that the Doctor would love to take her child and raise her for Sasha has Time Lord blood in her veins, but she will not allow it. Her daughter deserved more than a madman in a blue box, to be able to have a childhood without all that alien nonsense. Lucy knows it has done her no favours.

She would have liked to see Sasha grow up, but she thinks she doesn't deserve it. So she listens to the whispers of her jailers plot against her, and forms her own plans with family contacts.

They underestimated poor Lucy Saxon once. It would make her laugh if they did it a second time.

When the Master is resurrected in front of her and his disciples bow down to him, Lucy pulls the potion out from her pocket and throws it at him.

He threatens her, tells her to put it down but she refuses. Lucy has felt powerless all her life, and in her final moments she is delighted for an ancient, almighty Time Lord is begging her to spare his life.

That's the thing about the traumatized. They are not harmless or soft. They are unpredictable and dangerous for they know that they can survive.

She will not tell him about Sasha though. Lucy has done a great deal of wrong in her life, and she is determined that the only thing she did right will be guarded from her madman father.

Lucy thinks that this potion is her way of trying to rectify her mistakes.

Her last thought is of her daughter. She hopes she's given Earth a guardian.

It certainly needs one to protect it from the Time Lords.

I do not ask you to admire Lucy Saxon, nor like her. She stood by a mass-murderer and danced at his side while the world burned. But we must recognize that she suffered too, that she was perhaps not entirely sane to begin with and the Master used her and then tossed her aside like a used tissue. Lucy did fight back and reclaim her power, and she sacrificed herself to try and stop a monster that the Doctor didn't have the heart to.

In the end we are all stories for someone else to judge. Be fair when you judge Lucy.


End file.
